


Squandered

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-06
Updated: 2006-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:38:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't touch afterward – they untangle, sometimes laugh softly, trade well-meaning insults, and roll apart.  (Spoilers for 3x10: The Return (Part One))</p>
            </blockquote>





	Squandered

They don't touch afterward – they untangle, sometimes laugh softly, trade well-meaning insults, and roll apart. Sleep's a solitary venture, undertaken on separate sides of a too-small bed, precious space squandered between them as if there might be unpleasant consequences to touching when sex is no longer at play.

Neither complains. The sex is good – the sex is _great_ , John thinks, letting his mind wander over the sense memory of Rodney's hands, broad and capable, curled around his hip. He can hear, without trying, the stuttering breaths and greedy moans Rodney can't control when he's close, when he's clutching at John's arms, his back, the pillows, so near to coming that his face creases with desperate want, his body shaking, dampening the sheets with sweat. It takes no effort at all to remember the way his own body arcs, stretches, trembles beneath Rodney's fingertips – the way his muscles leap beneath the spill of kisses over his skin, the surge in his blood when teeth rasp against his wrist, the burn in his spine as he twists and reaches for the sharp, white everything that rests in the hollow of Rodney's palm. He remembers it now, with his body still humming, with Rodney curled into unobtrusiveness not twelve inches away.

Somehow, this feels like losing, no matter how good he felt five minutes before.

He closes the gap in his sleep one night, finds himself pressed with an elbow to Rodney's spine, uncomfortable and sticky, feet cold where they'd worked their way out from beneath the sheets. He flinches, watches Rodney's back as he pulls away, heart pumping rapidly as he waits for him to wake. He doesn't, and John throws an arm over his eyes, tries to still the panic in his blood that feels a lot like disappointment, and resolutely forces himself not to think about why.

Two nights later, he wakes to the thud of Rodney's arm across his chest – is half-way to his gun before he realizes Rodney's sprawling in his sleep. He pushes the arm away, but it flops back, and he's suddenly, unreasonably angry, a hair's breadth from shoving Rodney to the floor and yelling at him for being an inconsiderate bastard. Some part of his brain recognizes he's overreacting, orders the rest of him to still, and he lies awake until dawn, seething in frustration and turned on within an inch of his life.

It's a week after that when Rodney doesn't let go after sex, when the insults won't come, when the bruises on Rodney's shoulders are a stark, livid purple like those on his torso, parting gift from the latest bunch of miscreants to believe they're the chosen guardians of a world with a gate. John quells the feeling of suffocation that rises up inside his chest as Rodney tries to get comfortable, rests a hesitant hand on Rodney's back and watches the ceiling, thinking carefully neutral thoughts about wide-open spaces and sand and snow. He's not sorry when Rodney sighs and rolls away, curls into himself as he's done every night before, tugging the blankets up around his chin as though he's ashamed of the marks on his body. John opens his mouth to say something, because there are fractures here - strange discomfort; something unraveling - but he hasn't a clue what to say. He sleeps instead. It's what they always do.

The sex has become as much as part of life as power failures, allies turned hostile, gate expeditions and food that has no name. It's good - _great_ , a searing moment to feel something, anything, other than a wariness that's second-cousin to fear. But then they're home (of a kind), and Earth's ground into the soles of his boots, and his bed's finally big enough for two, but there's only him and the quiet of night beyond the reach of an ocean.

They talk on the phone – seem physically incapable of functioning without sniping at each other in some shape or form, and if cell phones are how they do it, well, no one else need know the depth of their dysfunction and the minutes are free after 7pm. They float the idea of a visit, but John pleads work and Rodney launches into scientific babble so impenetrable that John's two seconds from agreeing Rodney's a more significant human being than he is before he realizes he's been had. And if John lies awake, grinding his teeth and swearing under his breath before throwing a pillow down, twelve inches away from his back at night, it's not like anyone will ever see.

Elizabeth avoids everyone's phone calls, Radek disappears to God knows where, and Carson drops by with a frequency that's damn unsettling considering that John half-expects his blood to be drawn every time he hears a Scottish accent. Rodney gets increasingly mean and distant, save for occasional moments of wide-open honesty, tinny over speakerphone, forcing John to hit disconnect so he can stare at the wall until his heart gets the hell out of his throat. And everything feels slightly unreal, two shades this side of something he can solve with a P-90, and his boots have started rubbing blisters, which seems some sort of bitchy, cosmic joke.

But then, things change. Rodney shows up at his apartment, smothered by a sports coat that makes him look as if the insults of high-school never really left his blood, and John's so taken aback he doesn't know what to say. It's fine, if the way Rodney takes the beer out of John's hand, drains it and throws the bottle aside is any kind of indication - he has a plan. John lets his t-shirt get fisted in Rodney's hands since he sure as hell doesn't have an instruction manual anymore, and Rodney, freed, kisses him conscious for the first time in months.

The sex is good – is _great_ John thinks, shuddering and pleading as Rodney fucks him hard. And when they're done, when Rodney insults him half-heartedly, tries to roll away, John catches his wrist, pulls Rodney's hand to his lips and kisses the palm as if that might be enough. The look on Rodney's face is enough to tear a breath of salt-water misery straight out of John's lungs, and he hauls Rodney in, furious, shaking.

"I'm sorry," he manages, and it feels like the first thing he's said in years.

Rodney exhales against his skin, face against his shoulder, and says nothing in exactly the way John's come to understand.


End file.
